


The Nature of Flowers

by deathofaraven



Series: Prompt Responses [4]
Category: Fable (Video Games), Fable Legends (Video Game)
Genre: (results were inconclusive), Crushes, F/F, I had to look up if it's possible to grow roses from human hearts for this, Prompt Response, a bit of angst, but there will be a happy ending so yay?, enemies to friends to oops I kinda want to smooch you now, necromancy WITH PLANTS!, there might be a tiny bondage reference if you squint
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-29
Updated: 2018-10-29
Packaged: 2019-08-09 13:55:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16451237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathofaraven/pseuds/deathofaraven
Summary: Glory tries to right a wrong, but no good deed goes unpunished. And sometimes you fall harder than you mean to.





	The Nature of Flowers

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know if anyone actually wants Fable Legends fics, but you're getting them anyway. (Also, sorry but I haven't done a lick of editing on this so...oops.)
> 
> \---
> 
> Prompt (via deepwaterwriting prompts): “We planted her heart in the ground, and watered it daily.”

There hadn’t been a funeral for the Lady of Rosewood. No ceremony, no mourning; nothing of significance to mark her passing. Just a crumpled mass of deadened vines and wilted flowers at the feet of the Heroes who had worked so hard to slay her. Glory despised the sight immediately. She hadn’t expected it—if anything, she felt she _should_ have been pleased to finally have defeated the villain they’d been hunting for so long. Instead it was... _disappointing_. An eerie shadow of sensation that seemed to follow her as they began the journey back to Brightlodge.

She didn’t allow herself to ponder her feelings, but they lingered. Like strangers in the night, they crept upon her in quiet moments when all was still. A bitter taste of displeasure coating the back of her throat as tension threaded through her limbs, forcing her to clench and unclench her hands. Her memories returned to the image of a cracked, doll-like face lying in the dust and dead leaves. By the time they’d returned to Brightlodge, she could admit to herself that the thought made her furious. All that power, all that Will, snuffed out as if it were meaningless just because she’d been troublesome. Glory wasn’t a fool, she knew perfectly well that the White Lady had been dangerous. But that didn't mean she had needed to _die_. They—those fumbling, pathetic _men_ —had purposefully forced their way into her home and stolen from her. _They_ had been in the wrong. _They_ should have heeded her warnings instead of being greedy and prideful.

It wasn’t until far later, as she stared absently at her small library, that she finally understood why she was so bothered by the White Lady’s death: they were alike. Maybe not in manner or appearance, but certainly in spirit. Failed and left disillusioned by a world that didn’t care for them, they’d both turned to Will. They’d both looked for a way out, only to be scorned and threatened when they'd finally found it. And, in the face of that condemnation, they’d found true power.

And now Glory had helped destroy it.

 _Forgive me_ , she thought, though she knew it meant little. It had come far too late. What use did the dead have for apologies?

~ * ~

_The first time she had the dream, she thought she was drowning. Trapped in an unforgiving, unrepentant darkness. Her lungs crushed beneath an unseen weight. Sharp prickles roved across her body, clinging tighter until they broke through her skin. Her fingers tried futilely to loosen her bonds and she knew she was wrong. It wasn’t the depths of the sea that had her, but a patch of thick, thorny vines._

~ * ~

They had been called back to the Rosewood just before the first frost of the year. A group of bandits, in typical bandit fashion, had been terrorising a small town on the Wood’s border; it was a simple job, easy to finish, but the location had left Glory feeling contemplative. She couldn’t bring herself to join in the post-quest festivities. Instead, she holed herself up in the cottage she and her fellow Heroes had been allotted and buried herself in a botany tome. If she thought hard enough on it, she thought it was a bit stupid of her to try to bury the on-edge sensation prickling beneath her skin under pages and pages of text. And, as the evening bled into the night, she knew she couldn’t. The urge to run far, far away from here was too strong.

She forced herself to stay as long as she could, listening to Inga’s snoring and trying to pretend she didn’t feel the chill that lingered in the air wherever Winter stood. Shortly after midnight, she gave in. Glory rose silently from her cot, pulled on her clothes, and slipped out of the cottage without waking the other girls. It was even colder outside. The air still under an absent moon. She spotted Shroud perched atop the cottage, on permanent guard, and nodded a quick greeting to him. He didn’t move as she wandered off. Glory didn’t know where she was going, just that she _needed_ to move. The entire town lay in a sleepy silence. Her ears strained for the faintest sounds, but only caught the whisper of wind through the nearby Wood.

 _The Wood_. With a deep breath, she turned her steps toward it. Even from here, she could feel the Wood didn’t want her nearby. The trees creaked and groaned an angry commentary, their branches clawing for sky. Swallowing back a flicker of fear, she stepped into the Wood. Soft, springy grass cushioned her steps as the trees crowded her. All she could smell was damp earth. The wind sounded odd here. But she decided to follow the pull of Will, the whisper in the back of her mind, and walked onwards. It was dangerous, she supposed, giving herself to the Rosewood when she could feel how much it loathed her. But nothing stopped her. Nothing interrupted her journey.

She didn’t know how long she walked. She could hear others wandering the darkness, caught the occasional flash of light out of the corner of her eye, but still she walked. The pulsing of Will was growing stronger. The air scented with roses and sharp with the promise of frost. When she finally stumbled upon the clearing, her body ached and she was caked with mud, but a wave of satisfaction crashed over her irregardless. There, surrounded by enormous roses and a nest of arm-thick vines, was the Heart of the Rosewood.

~ * ~

 _On the treatise of necromancy we will say very little. That Man should_  
seek to defy the Will of the Gods and in so doing steal from Them what  
is rightfully Theirs is but hubris and folly. The perversion of Nature and  
Her Will is a blasphemy we cannot endorse.

Glory rolled her eyes, slamming the tome shut. _Then what use are you?_

She stared down at the desk before her, watching a wren hop about in obvious confusion. It didn’t seem to realise that, only a few minutes earlier, it had been a maggot-eaten corpse. With a frustrated sigh, Glory leaned over and pushed open the window beside her. Watched the wren fly off into the morning sunlight. _I need to look elsewhere_.

~ * ~

Glory had very little practical knowledge of flowers. She knew how to brew them into a potion or twist them into a spell, but she didn’t know how to care for them. How to give them life and strengthen their roots and stems. That didn’t stop her from kneeling in the dirt; fingers clawing at the damp soil, nails cracking against stones as she dug. Her hair kept getting in the way, blinding her and tangling in the nearby rosebushes. She paid it no heed. All she could focus on was the need to _do this_ ; to finish what she’d started. By the time she’d finished digging, dawn had begun to streak the sky behind the pale blooms above her. Her gown was ruined, her nails broke, and her hair looks appalling, but she didn’t care.

She pulled the Heart from where it rested, cold and pale as marble, and laid it gently in the hole. There was a pair of small garden shears on the Heart’s belt. Glory unhooked them, used the blades to crack open its chest and thread Will into its dying flesh. Through the Heart and into the Wood itself. She felt the trees lean closer, watching, whispering as she planted seeds in its chest and closed it back up. Tired but satisfied, she covered the Heart in soil. Planting it back where it belonged, amidst the earth and dying leaves.

~ * ~

_Afterwards, she welcomed the dream every time it came to her. Sunk into the vines and refused to fight. Allowed them to wrap around her throat. Pressed into the teasing threat of thorns scrapping against her skin. Whether in penance or temptation, she fell into each sensation and let it drag her under._

~ * ~

In the spring she discovered the Heart had sprouted leaves.

She’d asked a woman in Brightlodge what to do about roses the previous winter; _“once the seeds have germinated and begun to sprout, it shouldn’t take long to grow”_. The woman had told her about watering them and how much sunlight they needed. How to tempt them into growing stronger and healthier. With careful hands, Glory watered the leaves and began to wait.

The Heart grew unprecedentedly fast. Leaves growing into branches and vines. Flourishing. Coaxed along with droplets of blood and tendrils of Will. Rising larger and lusher by the day.

Until it was dead.

It happened abruptly, almost overnight. One day in late spring, it was green and beautiful; the next it was bone-white and withered until only twigs remained. _Dead_. Glory was left staring blankly at the remains, decimated.

 _“Sometimes dead things come back,”_ Leech, elbows deep in a cadaver, had told her before she left Brightlodge. _“But sometimes they don’t.”_

Sometimes they don’t. Didn’t. _Couldn’t_. And she was reminded of something she’d once seen on a tombstone: _The dead don’t linger._

And then the Will around her seemed to explode.

~ * ~

_Cold. So cold._

_Fingers clawing at the ground, nails breaking. Her roots were smothering her. She was dying in the darkness. Starved of wind and water. Desperate for sunlight. But she could taste nothing but dirt and decay. Her eyes and lungs burned._

_All around her, the plants cried out for her not to leave them._

_And then she was free._

~ * ~

Glory immediately pulled on her Will, feeling it burn and sear her veins as she prepared for what she assumed was an attack. She was wrong. A small, frail woman had pulled herself from the ground. Glory could do little more than stare. Her Will fizzled out into nothingness.

“ _Stay back_ ,” she panted, limbs shaking with the effort to hold herself up. Beneath a layer of grime and filth, her red hair seemed to glow like an ember.

Glory flinched, pulling her hand back. The urge to touch her, to see if she were real, had consumed every fibre of her being. She stumbled forward a couple steps before she’d even realised what she’d done. Froze when the Lady glared at her.

“Are-are you... _well_?” The words felt clumsy and pathetic as they fumbled from her lips. She felt an embarrassed flush burn its way up her neck. As if anyone would be well after spending six months dead.

A sharp, bitter laugh reached her ears. She felt the Will around her snap seconds before vines burst from the ground around her. Wrapping around her in a hateful, vicious mimicry of her dreams—except she didn’t think these would be content to simply hold her. She couldn’t breathe.

“ _You_ are one of my murderers and you ask me if I am _well_? You do not _deserve_ to speak to me, whatever selfish motivations you may have—”

“I gave you a heart!” Glory choked out, pulling futilely at the vines around her neck.

“ _You gave my children death_ ,” the Lady hissed. “Begone. And do not return.”

When the vines finally retracted and Glory could breathe again, she found herself alone and painfully lost.


End file.
